This forum seriously lacks photos and hardly any talk of public transportation. So this new thread to share photos and discuss developments with SETC, TNSRTC, and the metro and city buses, bus terminals etc

TNSTC is the second largest transport in India and is well known for its route coverage almost to every remote area within Tamil Nadu. TNSTC bus fare is the lowest in the country.

Tamil Nadu Bus transport corporation was first in India to introduce excellent paintings in buses. Apart from this, school students get a pass to travel in the buses for free from their school to their home town, these passes are issued by the Government of Tamil Nadu.

TNSTC has its own Coach Building Units and it uses Ashok Leyland buses.

Tamil Nadu Transport Development Finance Corporation Ltd., (TDFC) is a joint venture of TNSTC which collects deposits from public in order to fund TNSTC.

When such are the woes of many segments in society, the TNSTC (Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation) has not revised its fares, say officials.

Covering five regions in southern districts, the TNSTC has a fleet strength of 2,040 city buses, 1,705 mofussil buses and 400 spare vehicles. On an average, it covers 17.60 lakh km a day. Last month alone, it covered 5.34 crore km. The diesel consumption for a month stands at around 10,200 litres. Till the revision announcement, diesel cost Rs. 32.89 a litre, which has climbed to Rs. 35.11. On an average, the corporation suffered a loss of around Rs. 2 crore a month due to revision of diesel prices, officials said. Despite the price increase, the State government was committed to serving the people and operated all the buses, a senior official said.

A TNSTC trade union leader, S. Sampath, said that the government should fully exempt diesel consumed by the TNSTC from levy of sales tax. “Since we serve the public, there is no commercial motive. The TNSTC Madurai division alone is required to pay about Rs. 75 crore as sales tax every year. A relief from this burden will prove beneficial to the corporation,” he said.

Tamil Nadu Chamber of Commerce and Industry senior president S. Rethinavelu said that following the rise in petrol and diesel prices, there would be an all round increase in prices of all commodities. At a time when manufacturing activity had slowed down in many sectors and as a chain reaction most sectors in the allied industries were feeling the pressure, increase in petrol and diesel prices would lead to more cut throat competition in the market place.

Though the lorry freight was mainly decided on demand and supply of consignments, for people in southern districts, a majority of the commodities arrived from northern States. Hence, the prices were likely to go up, Mr. Rethinavelu opined.

Many people want the authorities to examine ways to fix reasonable fares for autorickshaws. “What prevents the officials from ensuring that meters are fixed in autorickshaws,” they wonder.

Passengers at railway station and bus stands feel that when already autorickshaw drivers were fleecing customers, such a revision has come as an excuse to collect exorbitant fares. An automobile dealer selling high-end cars had a different story to tell: “We have our sales target and every month we achieve it irrespective of increase in fuel prices.”

NEW DELHI: In a move to improve public transport in rural areas and to help revive sick State Transport Undertakings (STUs) such as in Bihar, West
Bengal, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, the road transport and highways ministry has mooted a proposal to provide them 40,000 low floor buses. The proposal has been sent to Planning Commission and finance ministry for approval.

Confirming this, a senior ministry official said that though the proposal was prepared months back, they sent it to the plan penal and the finance ministry only after the poll results were out in May. As per the proposal, the Centre would bear 50% of the capital investment in case of all states except those in the north-east.

"We propose 75% central grant in case of those states to promote public health. There will be uniformity in the design of all these buses," the official said. This is seen as a move similar to the Centre's approval for states to purchase about 15,000 buses under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) as part of second economic stimulus package announced in February this year.

Sources in the ministry said the Centre's initiative would come as a big help to states where transport corporations have either been wound up or are in bad shape. Officials said that baring some states in the south such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, majority of STUs were not in good health both in terms of their fleet and finances.

For example, Orissa State Road Transport Corporation (OSRTC) has only 262 buses. MP, with only 315 buses, has decided to wind up the corporation. "The situation is similarly bad in Bihar. Condition of majority of buses in Punjab, Rajasthan and other states in north India are unsatisfactory, though Uttar Pradesh has made remarkable improvement recently modernising its fleet," said a senior ministry official. STUs, reeling under debts of more than Rs 1,70,000 crore, have been demanding one-time waiver from the Centre since 2005, which was turned down in the past.

Ministry sources said that though Centre had provided financial help to STUs for capital investment to revive them, the central assistance was used for 'non-designated' purposes by several states.

Throughout my life, I am an admirer of the Tamil Nadu State buses.
I had travelled across the length and breadth of the State and as to the neighboring States like Kerala & Tamil Nadu in Tamil Nadu's Government owned buses.

I am very much associated with this transport organization, ever since I was a child and I shall share some of my memories, while I get time.

I do remember the time, me as a child was travelling from Trivandrum to Nagercoil in the MSTD (Madras State Transport Department) buses.
The buses plying in the Trivandrum-Nagercoil/Kanya Kumari route were clad with brown colour.

Even during those days, there was a separate division for express buses.
The express buses were green plus yellow in colour and mostly served the Trivandrum-Kanya Kumari sector. There was a big depot for these green express buses at Kanya Kumari & kids used to watch this bus depot with much curiosity.

This is the story during the early 1970s.

Later on, Kattabomman Transport Corporation (KTC) and Tiruvalluvar Transport Corporation (TTC) started plying in the Trivandrum-Nagercoil and Tirunelveli routes. KTC was having jurisdiction over KK and Nellai districts.
The NTC or the Nesamony originated much later.

My first journery by bus across Tamil Nadu was a trip to Nagapattinam from Nagercoil. May be in '78 or '79. At that time, there was no depot for the TTC at Trivandrum and for boarding long distance buses, we needed to go to the TTC depots either at Martandam or Nagercoil. (It was in the early 80s that TTC started its fully fledged depot at Trivandrum.) During this trip, I saw a number of bus body building units attached to the depots, exclusively to build buses for TTC. I could see one such unit at Meenakshipuram (NGL), Nellai, Madurai and so on.

Hi this is my first message in this website,better i want to discuss the small things which can improve tamilnadu bas transport system , now a day as many of us are preferred to travel on train or private omni bus providers , the reason TNSTC and SETC were Lagging in service,some suggestions to improve SETC
1.Online reservations system.
2. Reservation counter with seats available in each buses should be displayed at the entrance.
3.reservation counter should be outside of the busstand.
4.Should Provide water in the buses(mineral water) for long travel like8 hours.
5.Increases theniumber of bus transport in week ends and night.
6.issue a cover like what they give in flight wont cost more thn 30 paise if bulk booking ,in their seats and if they vomit inside they have to charge them a small money as fine or they have to clean it(cleaning things should be there in the bus).
7.Some maintanance inside this setc Buses like fan and tv set, and main thing is to remove the very old thiruvalluvar buses from setc..

Some suggestions for TNSTC:
1. ontime starting if the bus is full or empty at the starting period its loss making but long turn.
2.some buses where no standing board has to made,where conductor is not required.
3.should stop at good restaurant near some city busstand not on the outskirts of the city where we have to pay for evrything which is too costly thn the other places,
4. good maintanance again which is lagging in all our transport systems.
5. some increments for the good petrol consumption,good servvice to passengers,feed back from passengers something attractive.

*50 crores TNSTC/SETC will get profit in advertisement through satellite TV
*TNSTC/SETC was spending 17crores in renting the DVD players. So satellite TV concept was introduced.
* Now LCD monitors are fitted in Trichy, Madurai & Nellai buses.
* Satellite TV will be telecasted either from Trichy or Chennai.

Chennai, Aug 6 : Madras High Court today directed the State Transport Authorities (STA) to remove all advertisement signboards from the State-owned corporation buses immediately.
While allowing a Public Interest Litigation Petition(PIL), a Division Bench comprising Justices S J Mukhopadhya and Raja Ilango held display on the side of the buses caused accidents and casualties.

In his PIL, Coimbatore Consumer Forum president M Kaliyamurthy submitted that the State Transport Authorities and the State-owned Transport Corporation Managing Directors allowed private publicity companies to use back windscreen of the buses and both the side window mirrors to display commercial advertisements.

''To earn money for the transport corporations, the officials allowed the private parties to use the State-owned buses for products publicity purpose which is a violation of Motor Vehicles Regulation Act (MVR Act),'' he contended.

''While thousands of buses carrying advertisement signboards are attracting bypass riders, it leads to accidents and causalties,'' Mr Kaliyamurthy added and sought to forbear the authorities from displaying advertisements on buses.

The Bench also directed the transport authorities to file the compliance report within two weeks.

Adverstisement on Public transport is a Global phenomena and i have never seen anyone complaining that they met with a accident due to a adverstisement on a Bus.In that case all vinyl banners in cities and even sticking posters on walls need to be banned.
Coimbatore Consumer Forum has literally killed a good revenue route for the STC's.Now STC's will dump more SLF buses on the public vigorously to compensate the loss of revenue from ads.

Come September and 300 new Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) buses will be on the city roads. A couple of months later another
600 new buses will join the fleet. All the 900 will be semi-low floor buses, each costing Rs 20 lakh.

According to official sources, the state transport department recently issued orders to procure 1,500 new buses 900 for the MTC and 300 each for the Coimbatore and Madurai transport corporations under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Mission (JNNURM) scheme.

Ashok Leyland will supply 1,000 buses and the Tata group 500. The department is expected to issue orders to procure 100 airconditioned buses in a couple of weeks, sources told The Times of India.

"About 300 buses are to be delivered by the end of this month and the remaining should be delivered in a phased manner by October-November. We are going to issue orders for 100 airconditioned buses soon and we hope the MTC will have 1,000 new buses by December this year,'' a senior transport official said.

The MTC presently has 3,350 buses of which 3,000 are on the road and 350 kept as spare vehicles in depots. The fleet includes 1,000 buses that are 10 to 12 years old; the normal life-time of a bus is 7-8 years. MTC officials said 40% of the new buses would be used to replace old vehicles and the remaining 60% inducted as additional buses. This would increase the fleet strength to about 4,000.

On the procurement of airconditioned buses, officials said all would be Volvo buses, eachi costing about Rs 80 lakh. The MTC currently has 30 airconditioned buses.

The expected induction of more new buses could increase the corporation's daily revenue by Rs 30 lakh. Presently, it earns an average of Rs 1.80 crore daily transporting about 50 lakh passengers on 650 routes in the city and suburbs. MTC buses make about 40,000 trips every day, or a distance of about 8.30 lakh km.